Next step' in Internet's evolution

Houston Chronicle ^ | Sept. 18, 2003, 6:31AM | By ERIC BERGER

[BellStar]

Computer scientists at Rice University say the Internet
is developing wrinkles.

So they're proposing, along with colleagues at other universities, to radically overhaul America's Internet
infrastructure, from the backbones that transport data around the world, to conduits into homes.

To jump-start the process the National Science Foundation awarded $7.5 million Wednesday to several
academic institutions, including Rice, to develop technologies 2,000 times faster than dial-up and up to
250 times faster than DSL or cable modems. And they want to bring this ultra high speed to 100 million homes.

"We need to take the next step," said Ed Knightly, an associate professor of electrical and computer
engineering at Rice.

In recent years high-tech leaders, as well as organizations such as the Brookings Institution, have
pushed the federal government for a national initiative on universal broadband access. They estimate
a proliferation of ultra high-speed Internet access could generate up to $500 billion for the economy.

The consortium of scientists charged with the task will focus during the next five years on determining the
best, most economical configuration of routers, fiber-optic cable and other network infrastructure.
They will also study network reliability and security issues.

Rice will be the center of wireless research. Knightly's team will set up several wireless beacons
around the Rice campus to test technology that can deliver high-speed Internet access. The goal is to send
out focused beams to nearby computers, rather than a mass signal in every direction.

Eventually, he said, anyone with a laptop should be able to sit down anywhere in Houston and tap into an
ultra-broadband connection.

Current broadband technologies of cable and DSL lines operate well below the threshold needed to consistently
deliver DVD-quality television or videoconferencing.

With the proposed standard of 100 megabits per second, experts say, the Web's true potential can be achieved:
High-definition video can be delivered on demand. Home videos can be sent to family members in a
matter of seconds. Employees can work from home, with a video image of a co-worker one push of a button away.

None of it will come cheap. At an estimated $500 to $1,000 per home, the potential price tag could top $100
billion.

Critics say there is no proof more broadband will make people more productive. They also note that although
broadband access is available to the vast majority of U.S. consumers at home, only about one-third -- some
40 million Internet users -- connect via broadband.

But, says the project's leader, industry is already rushing to make super-broadband available in some
communities. If the entire network is not upgraded, such changes could create a bottleneck that bogs down
the entire system, said Hui Zhang, an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.

And although there is no guarantee industry will adopt the project's recommendations, Zhang noted that AT&T is
a partner in the research, and many of the participants have worked in industry.

"It's valuable to step back, and take a look at the network as a whole," Zhang said. "If this is going to
be there for the next 100 years, it's important to do it right."

[BellStar]

100 megabits per second!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[knews_hound]

My entire home is wired for 100MB connections (category 5 wiring).

Being in the business, it was easy for me but the average person will find it not only expensive, but nearly impossible to achieve due to lack of access, construction methods ect.

Wireless offers solutions for some, but paranoids like myself will never feel comfortable with it.

On the plus side, it is sure nice to be able to move files from PC to PC with the only limit being the access speed of the respective hard drives!

Cheers,

knews hound

[ecomcon]

We used to have the Space Program driving technology. Now it's the Porn Program.

[billorites]

I can't believe that I'm only 50 miles from Boston and still cannot get anything better than dialup access.

[LibertyAndJusticeForAll]

http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12356.html
[ Caltech computer scientists have developed a new data transfer protocol for the Internet fast enough to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds.

The protocol is called FAST, standing for Fast Active queue management Scalable Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The researchers have achieved a speed of 8,609 megabits per second (Mbps) by using 10 simultaneous flows of data over routed paths, the largest aggregate throughput ever accomplished in such a configuration. More importantly, the FAST protocol sustained this speed using standard packet size, stably over an extended period on shared networks in the presence of background traffic, making it adaptable for deployment on the world's high-speed production networks. ]

[DeFault User]

only about one-third -- some 40 million Internet users -- connect via broadband.

Is this correct? I had no idea there were 40 million using broadband.

[roaddog727]

Forget 100Mbps... Gig-e over fiber to the homestead!

WooHoo!

Ladies and gentlemen, grab your GBIC's!

[11th Earl of Mar]

Critics say there is no proof more broadband will make people more productive.

But we at Free Republic will be able to argue much faster.

[dfwgator]

"We need to take the next step," said Ed Knightly, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice.

Yep, so that people can download their porn even quicker.

[Redcloak]

100 megabits per second!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yup... That's one big heap o' porn.

[Izzy Dunne]

I can't believe that I'm only 50 miles from Boston and still cannot get anything better than dialup access.

You haven't looked.
I have 1-2 Meg per second, for $59 per month, and I'm in MidCoast Maine, hardly a bustling metropolis.
Try here

[uglybiker]

Wireless offers solutions for some, but paranoids like myself will never feel comfortable with it.

I've been running wireless for almost 2 years with no problems.

Oh yeah, and in my area, wireless is cheaper than cable. (faster, too.)

[So Cal Rocket]

Caltech computer scientists have developed a new data transfer protocol for the Internet fast enough to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds.

If you own stock in Blockbuster Video, better sell now before it's too late.

[LibertyAndJusticeForAll]

Worse than that, when this was published in March, I was working with a start-up doing video streaming and video compression. Although "there can never be enough bandwidth" may still hold true, why go to the expense and effort of compressing video if it may not be necessary soon?

[Orbiting_Rosie's_Head]

Forget 100Mbps... Gig-e over fiber to the homestead! WooHoo! Ladies and gentlemen, grab your GBIC's!

Gig-e is chump change. OC192 (10G) can be made cheaply. 10 gigabit optical is now commonplace on single wavelength transport and metro DWDM channels. 40 Gigabit is in the cooker. Fully-populated C-band single-fiber DWDM systems now have terabit capacity

[Cobra64]

My entire home is wired for 100MB connections (category 5 wiring).

What's category 5?

[MississippiMan]

If you own stock in Blockbuster Video, better sell now before it's too late.

If Blockbuster's smart, they're already figuring out how to be a provider in the new era. Of course, DVDs and even VHS are gonna be around for a long time anyway.

MM

[knews_hound]

Being in the business, I have some real horror stories to tell regarding wireless networks.

I dont mean the service offered by some ISP, I mean wireless hubs, switches, routers ect.

I have no doubt that it works, and that it has applications.

However, before I will expose all my personal data, HUGE music collection and my tens of thousands of movies and pictures to any pimply faced teenager with a scanner and a laptop, I will wait for at least a few years.

yes yes yes, I know, the ports can be configured to not allow access, can be encrypted and all that.

But in my case, I feel it isnt worth the chance that I might forget to close a port or accidently turn off the security features while testing or changing my configuration.

Just call me old fashioned.


Cheeers,

knews hound

[frithguild]

Four Scenarios for the Future of the Internet
Thursday, August 21, 2003
David S. Isenberg
Is the US going to get the Internet we want? Or the Internet we deserve?

I was invited to the Intel Capital CEO Summit to be on a panel on "The Internet Five Years Out," with David Farber and Vint Cerf, moderated by Intel's Director of Research, David Tennenhouse, who is one of the early explicators of a generic network that decouples the distribution mechanism from the content it carries.

I have been on panels with my heroes before, but I found the prospect of opening my mouth near Farber and Cerf unusually intimidating. So I wrote down every word that I intended to say in my allotted five minute opening statement, then I rehearsed and wordsmithed and re-rehearsed. Once on stage, Tennenhouse threw us a curve. Instead of calling for opening statements, he immediately prodded us into discussion. It was a brilliant stratagem. We had fun, and the audience picked it up. We also did some useful thinking in public (e.g., that the Telecom Act of 200(6?) was virtually certain, so it might be time to start thinking about structural separation at the IP layer).

But my carefully prepared opening statement was all dressed up with nowhere to go. So let this be the alternate destination for its payload.

Now that home Ethernet is almost as common as a cable modem, it a misnomer to talk about, "the last mile." Clay Shirky points out that today's Internet is dumbbell-shaped; it is fat on the premises, fat in the backbone and at least 100 times skinnier in between. So to me, the big issue for the next five years is how the skinny middle will achieve the girth that technology makes possible. Here are four scenarios, alternative futures that sample the space of possible outcomes.

Scenario #1. The telcos would have us believe that they'll give us that fat middle pipe. They'll have to lose their vertically-integrated business model to do it, or they'll have to find a way to cripple the end-to-end property of the Internet. It is a huge challenge for an established company to change business models. And if they cripple end-to-end, they're likely to cripple the very thing that makes the Internet so useful to so many people. But it's a plausible scenario, in fact it is The Official Future Scenario.

Scenario #2. Other utilities -- the electric company, the gas company (and maybe the cable company) -- could use their rights of way to build the fat pipe to the premises. Utilities are good at delivering bulk, low margin goods. But can utilities be entrepreneurial enough to open new lines of retail business?

Scenario #3. Customers will own the technology that extends the fat home network towards the fat backbone, eliminating the "access" sector. The ownership model might be condominium fiber, or fiber owned by homeowner associations or other kinds of small quasi-governmental organizations. This fiber will probably coexist with customer-owned 802.11 and other wireless link and distribution technologies. For this to scale, premises network infrastructure must become more self-connecting and self-operating than it is today. A further warning -- the only wireless solutions that scale enough to encompass any reasonable end-game are multi-hop or packet relay networks.

Scenario #4. The telcos lawyer and lobby and legislate to preserve previous power and prevent customers, utilities and other competitors from building the network that we really want. They'd use this last strength, their remaining core competence -- to make broadband end-to-end networks illegal. This is the scenario that's most demonstrably happening in the United States today. According to a recent ITU study, among the developed nations, the United States is now #15 in broadband penetration per capita and falling fast.

I think Intel -- and Intel's partners -- and the rest of us -- would prefer scenario 3, where the customers own the connection to the backbone. This outcome is not guaranteed. To get Scenario #3 we'll need good technology, strong partners and a rich value matrix, of course. But to stop Scenario #4 from making #3 impossible, we will need some major policy innovations.

Five years from now, the U.S. will have the Internet it deserves. It might well be an Internet that is further behind the rest of the world's Internet than we can possibly imagine.


This commentary appeared as part of SMART Letter #89, August 18, 2003. Copyright 2003 by David S. Isenberg

[BellStar]

Every thing I have, 2 LT's, 2 DT's, all wired for my Cable Modem and Nextel wireless Modem (slow) to take on the road. Plus I have a wireless network in my house. I welcome the high-speed Internet access via focused beams to my computer, from a local source.